Hebrew Israelite football student in Ohio forced to eat pork as punishment for missing practice
A pan of fried bacon. Photo by iStockphoto
(JTA) — A high school football coach in Ohio and seven of his staff have been suspended for punishing a Hebrew Israelite student-athlete by forcing him to eat a pepperoni pizza in violation of his religious commitment to keep a kosher diet, according to a report from Cleveland 19 News.
The 17-year-old student at McKinley High School in Canton, Ohio, was being disciplined for missing a weight lifting session on May 20, said Edward L. Gilbert, an attorney for the boy’s family.
Four days after missing practice, Coach Wattley Marcus and other coaching staff presented him with a pizza topped with pepperoni, chosen because it includes pork.
“They order him to go into the gym. He sits in a chair,” Gilbert told Cleveland 19 News. “There is a pizza box on the floor. He picks up the pizza — they tell him he has to, as punishment, eat that whole pizza.”
The student’s religous identity and his avoidance of pork were known to Coach Wattley Marcus and other coaching staff, according to Gilbert.
“I mean it just crosses a line on every level, it’s just wrong,” Gilbert said.
Canton City School District released a statement saying it was investigating the incident and would announce its findings soon.
“The incident calls into question whether appropriate team management, discipline, and player accountability infrastructures are in place,” the statement says.
Correction (June 4): After this story ran, The New York Times revealed that the student is a Hebrew Israelite, not Jewish.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
